Health awareness, lifestyles, and self-evaluations of health status in students of Kyusyu Sangyo University before and during COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

First, at the time of entrance into Kyushu Sangyo University, we compared health awareness, lifestyles, and self-evaluation of the physical and mental health status in 5,154 students with and in 2,653 students without experience of Corona disaster. Second, we also compared lifestyles and self-evaluation of the health status in 4,013 students with and 4,187 students without experience of Corona disaster during the period of attendance at the university. Finally, to know the relating factors to the self-evaluation of mental health status or its changes from the entrance to the junior or senior year of the university, we performed logistic regression analysis. Results showed that the freshmen with experience of Corona disaster have higher health awareness and that less students were not involved in the physical exercise. The 3rd or 4th year students of the university who experienced Corona disaster after the entrance have more frequently habitual physical exercise in men and women, and in women, more frequently take breakfast. Logistic regression analysis shows that, in men and women, better self-evaluation of mental health status or its changes from the entrance to the junior or senior year of the university were related to the habitual taking of the breakfast, and the experience of Corona disaster related to worsened self-evaluation of mental health status. Therefore, habitual taking the breakfast is important.